Category Archives: Wye the flute?

Day 10 – October 10th – Whist

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A short one tonight, as I’ve just got back from a night out at the monthly village whist drive. I did’t expect it to go quite so long, but it’s a full evening’s worth. For two pounds entry, one gets to play 24 hands of whist, against some seriously seasoned village players, as well as supper after the 12th hand. I’m not a total newcomer to the game – my grandad taught me how to play when I was about five – and somehow managed to get enough good hands to come equal fourth. My prize: a massive rhubarb crumble scented candle! My room is going to smell wonderful.

Between whist in the evening and my run (compete with surprise downpour) in the morning, I got in a good solid five hours of practice. Four of them were spent on exercises and scales, they’re endless! I can feel all the muscles in my fingers afterwards though, so hopefully the practice is working. The final hour was mostly spent playing some of the Moyse 24 as expressively as I possibly could in preparation for Monday.

Oh, and I thought I was going to have it easy with repertoire this week, as I’ve played the Marais Folies d’Espagne before. Alas, I’ve played the unaccompanied version, which is in E minor, and we’re doing the other one in G minor. Most of the variations are the same, but my ease of playing the trills has gone out the window. Probably a good job it’s due to rain on the weekend!

Day 9 – October 9th – Time for some expression

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Our lesson today started with a hike across the fields to Trevor’s house. I love the fresh, brisk air, and the view going up the hill is amazing, well worth being out of breath at the top. Yesterday’s rain left the path a bit muddy, but nothing a good pair of hiking boots can’t deal with.

I had been gritting my teeth a little in preparation for the class, but it seems that my practice so far is working enough to at least keen the criticisms from getting any worse!

Warm-ups were a deluge of information: learn this one, and this one, oh, and the one on page 100 is wonderful for your fingers! Everyone was in the same boat though, we’re all trying to look calm while working frantically. I was quite pleased with how the Moyse finger exercises we’ve now been working on for a week have come along. Not perfect by a long way, and Trevor’s metronome marking of crotchet = 108 was rather brisk in the lesson, but at least I got through them from memory at the requested speed.

We finished off the warm-up session with Trevor launching into the first movement of the Bach E minor sonata from memory and all of us looking a bit stunned at having to play along. A bit of work still needed there!

From there, we moved into tunes – which some of us have been set as a cure for lack of expression. Mine is Sicilienne, written by Maria Theresia von Paradis as a a gift for Mozart. Though Trevor was generous in his criticism, I genuinely got a lot out of playing this for him. He really took the time to stress the importance of ever aspect of the musical line – really precise rhythm, note endings, separation, graduation of dynamics, beat stresses, and holding the first note of trills for a fraction to get full effect. This is the sort of detailed study that I think it’s difficult to get in a university setting, where the number of lessons necessitates a certain focus on exam-related goals. Hopefully, the my work on it will show in the repertoire pieces I play in the weeks and months to come.

In the car on the way to our evening walks, Trevor has set about teaching us a selection of call-and-response songs. Tonight, we tried to learn ‘Green Grow the Rushes O’ – all 12 verses! Needless to say that we need a little more practice in remembering all the lyrics. There isn’t a huge selection of videos online, but this one is closest to the way we sound, and good for a laugh as well!

Day 8 – October 8th – A week in!

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A day with nothing to do but practise, and this was even enforced by the rainy (alternating drizzly with absolutely hosing it down) weather. In the morning we still had no working heating, and I was really struggling to keep my hands warm enough to practise. As well as my almost-constant cups of tea, I was doing start jumps every 15 minutes to try and get my circulation going a bit better. However, around lunchtime Andy (our landlord) came to sort out our problem with the heating, and now we have functional radiators!

As the days progress, I’m becoming increasingly aware of the amount of music and the number of exercises that Trevor wants us to get under our fingers. Each week in class we need to present an Andersen Study, a Moyse Study (from 24 Little Melodic Studies), a repertoire piece and an orchestral excerpt. Not enormous on its own, but in addition to all the exercises that we’re expected to have from memory in the not-too-distant future, it’s quite a lot to fit into each day’s practice.

I guess in some ways the question of how to deal with it all boils down to risk minimisation. I want to memorise all the exercises, but I also don’t want to make a fool of myself playing them in class tomorrow or next week either. So just going for memory at the expense of quicker learning from the book isn’t an option. On the other hand, I also don’t want to make a fool of myself if and when Trevor does take the book away! So I need a practice plan that allow for both, and makes the best use of my time each day.

Here, for the moment, is what I’m doing:

– Trying to spend a little time on each and every exercise on the list

– Starting at a different point (aka in a different key) each day

– For the key I start with, I try to play from memory, and so spend a bit more time on it.

– If that key is moderately successful, I keep on with the memory work for a few more keys.

– Then I play a few more keys with the music (but trying not to look too much) and at a faster speed, trying to get in the finger work-out part of the day as well.

My plan means that I’m not getting through every key with every exercise, though all the keys are covered by the end of my practice, often a couple of times. Hopefully (and my fingers are still crossed) this will mean that everything gradually settles itself into my long-term memory, and that my fingers will get more agile along the way.

Now on my fifth cup of tea (herbal only though) for the day!

Day 7 – October 7th – Tesco Tuesday

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Suddenly autumn is well and truly here. We haven’t worked out how to turn the heating on, and our landlady was nowhere to be found today, so I am sitting here writing this wearing a big jumper, my new hat (from the bargain bin in Tesco today, but really quite warm and with a bobble) and two pairs of socks.

This morning we had the weekly trip to Tesco, this time to stock up for the whole week. Lots of veggies (I live with the other vegetarians), as well as ginko supplements that will hopefully stop me loosing circulation in my fingers when it gets cold. Then we went on to the most wonderful organic farm shop, despite having already bought all our fruit and veggies. I think Trevor just wanted to show us around.

The rest of the day was practice, lots of scales and exercises. Trevor gave us a particularly devilish one called the ‘Pinkie Polka’ for the workout of both pinkie fingers. We had to sightread it in class yesterday while Trevor stood there looking smug, and I’m determined to get it working. It will be slow progress though, after a solid 15 min of work it still sounds sloppy at crotchet = 50.

Our repertoire for this week is Andante et Scherzo by Louis Ganne, one of the French book pieces that I haven’t played before. I’ve made some good progress with the Scherzo today, but will need to be economical with my time tomorrow as there is so much to get done. I’m hoping that solid practice with a metronome and gradually increasing the speed will get the notes into my fingers enough to play them fluidly on Thursday. Our orchestral excerpt for the week (from memory, as Trevor lightly dropped in) is Après-midi, and I feel that there will be plenty of scope there for further discussion of my vibrato deficiencies.

On our evening walk I ended up as Trevor’s partner (he picks someone each night), and actually had a really good conversation with him. I’d been rather dreading it, as I’m still getting the feeling he finds me a bit over-sure of myself and talkative. I asked lots of questions about his life and career, and told a few stories of my own, mostly about travel. The conversation reminded me what a knowledgeable, experienced old man he is, and I came back to my final hour of practice with a renewed desire to please him. Too bad that my lips gave out after 30 min!

Day 6 – October 6th – Reality Check

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First full day of normal lessons, and I can’t say that I enjoyed myself too much. After the exhilaration of yesterday, as well as my practice over the weekend, I was hopeful that my playing might please Trevor a little more than on Friday. Fat chance – today’s theme seemed to be ‘let’s point out all Naomi’s flute failings’, which can be summed up as follows:

– “You play with absolutely no expression”

– My vibrato sounds like a goat

– I don’t have an innate concept of musical line

– I can play neither loudly nor quietly enough

On the other hand, my intonation has been pronounced ‘not bad’. That is still quite a list to be starting with, and certainly not aimed to improve my self-confidence. And this entire list was based on my performance of warm-ups and three lines of the Andersen Op. 15 Study No. 1!. Considering that this is only day 6, I think that the question is not whether all this is as bad as Trevor makes out (I know I need to work on aspects of my playing, that’s why I’m here), but how to deal with his teaching methods themselves.

I’m not for a moment saying that I was the only one to cop it today, criticism was dealt out to all in some form or another, but I did seem to get something of a special treatment. So, here are the things I’m keeping in mind for the moment:

– I do come across as quite self-confident, which I’m not sure is the done thing here. Both that and the fact that I’m a bit more ‘settled in’ that some of the others (language and culture-wise) perhaps means that Trevor thinks I’m ready for the weightier criticism straight away.

– I’m into new music, which is not Trevor’s cup of tea.

– Trevor’s motto as listed in his practice books is that one must “play in time and in tune with a decent sense of line” to get through orchestral auditions. If my intonation is ok and he has yet to pick on my rhythm, then the decent sense of line is clearly what he’s going to go for big-time.

– Hopefully I can only improve from here! Tomorrow is a new day with plenty of hours in which to practise (and now a clearer direction), I’m a hard worker, and I want to play the flute beautifully.

Otherwise, we had a lovely walk across the fields to class this morning before the rain set in. I think it’s going to be wet for a while to come…